Although short of attaining the ideal of a ‘substitute for war’, arbitration has largely succeeded in peacefully resolving international disputes. Beyond that, arbitral commitments and arbitral processes have deepened civilized and cooperative international relations, promoted the development of international law and international institutions, and facilitated the well-being of mankind in multiple important ways. Particulars of that proposition are set forth in this one-of-a-kind book. Each of the fourteen chapters is devoted to one landmark international arbitration case, primarily state-to-state but also includes commercial disputes with geopolitical dimensions. Each chapter is written by a practitioner and/or academic of high international standing. The project was initiated by the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, which celebrates its centennial in 2017. By focusing on landmark cases, the book contributes to a continued dynamic development of dispute resolution in complicated or sensitive geopolitical contexts, and demonstrates how arbitration has and can continue to play an important role for international relations. Practitioners, political decision makers, and academics in any part of the world with an interest in international arbitration and international law or political history and policy on an international level will find it not only deeply informative but also immensely useful.

It is natural that the advocates of international Peace should sometimes grow discouraged and impatient through what they are tempted to consider the slow progress of their cause. Sudden outbursts of popular feeling, selfish plans for national aggrandisement, unremoved causes of antipathy between neighbours, lead them to overlook the general tendency of circumstances and opinions which, when it is regarded on a large scale, is sufficient to justify their loftiest hopes. It is this general tendency of thought and fact, corresponding to the maturer growth of peoples, which brings to us the certain assurance that the Angelic Hymn which welcomed the Birth of Christ advances, slowly it may be as men count slowness, but at least unmistakably, towards fulfilment. There are pauses and interruptions in the movement; but, on the whole, no one who patiently regards the course of human history can doubt that we are drawing nearer from generation to generation to a practical sense of that brotherhood and that solidarity of men-both words are necessary-which find their foundation and their crown in the message of the Gospel.

Copy in Manuscripts includes pamphlet, "Expressions from South Carolina on the question of universal peace" (1907) tipped into endpaper.